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New York Doesn’t Care to Remember the Civil War

By Sam Roberts December 26, 2010 11:00 amDecember 26, 2010 11:00 am

It was anything but civil. On Jan. 7, 1861, Mayor Fernando Wood exhorted New York’s Board of Aldermen to declare the city’s independence from Albany and from Washington — a bold stroke of self-preservation that he maintained “would have the whole and united support of the Southern States.”

Two years later, the federal government diverted Union troops fresh from the Gettysburg battlefield to quell bloody draft riots in Manhattan, a defensive military maneuver that might have allowed Robert E. Lee to escape and prolonged the war.

If that is all New Yorkers remember about the Civil War, it is no wonder that the State Legislature balked at authorizing an official sesquicentennial commemoration.

Once New York’s ambivalence was reversed, its banks helped finance the war. The state’s industrial capacity exceeded that of the entire South (a factory in upstate New York turned out 60 iron horseshoes per minute). More New Yorkers, hailing from the most populous state, went into battle (nearly 450,000) than residents of any other state, and more (about 46,000) died as a result of fatal wounds or disease.

“The Union does not win the war without New York,” said Kenneth T. Jackson, a historian at Columbia University who edited the Encyclopedia of New York City.

Yet earlier this year, the State Senate failed even to authorize a sesquicentennial commission, much less appropriate any money to support commemorations, exhibitions, retrospectives or any other events around the state to mark the start of the Civil War 150 years ago.

“In my mind, the war starts here in the 1830s with the Underground Railroad and abolition,” said Robert Weible, the official New York State historian.

“New York poured more money and manpower and materiel — weaponry from Cold Spring, iron from Troy and ironclads like the Monitor from Greenpoint — than any other state,” said Harold Holzer, a Lincoln scholar and co-editor of “The New York Times Complete Civil War.”

“It produced the most home-front patriotic images and the most newsprint,” he added. “And it had the only ‘battle’ ever to hit a Northern state — the one we too often forget — the race riot/pogrom we call in a misnomer the New York Draft Riots.” (After the first conscripts were selected in 1863, angry mobs — mostly immigrants who could not afford to buy their way out of the draft — roamed Manhattan for several days terrorizing blacks, abolitionists and other New Yorkers.)

New York also houses what is billed as the largest collection of Civil War battle flags and is home to imposing monuments to Civil War veterans, including Grand Army Plaza in Brooklyn and the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Memorial Monument in Riverside Park. Just no official commemoration.

“It’s probably yet another embarrassing case of historical Alzheimer’s, which means that New York’s failure to commemorate the Civil War will be an inducement for other states, not to mention its own municipalities, to walk away too,” said Allen C. Guelzo, a history professor and the director of Civil War-era studies at Gettysburg College in Pennsylvania. “Which is a pity, because New York, Pennsylvania and Ohio formed the central pillar of the Union, both in terms of politics and their military contribution.”

Mayor Wood unabashedly embraced the South initially because its cotton merchants were financed by New York banks and protected from loss by New York insurers, and it transported its harvest in New York ships.

“It behooves every distinct community as well as every individual to take care of themselves,” Mr. Wood said. (Although a little more than a month later, in welcoming President-elect Abraham Lincoln to City Hall, Mr. Wood said, “If the Union dies, the present supremacy of New York may perish with it.”)

Many aldermen were not averse to Mr. Wood’s initial suggestion. Only a few days before, a lawmaker introduced legislation for a state convention “to take into consideration the present state of the Union.”

“Do you want to secede from the state?” another alderman asked the bill’s sponsor.

“That is just what we will do if they don’t let us alone,” he replied.

But legislation promoting secession died once the war began. This year, the same thing happened in the Senate to a bill introduced by Assemblyman John J. McEneny, a Democrat from Albany, to create an unpaid 14-member sesquicentennial commission to promote historical tourism. A Senate sponsor, George D. Maziarz, a Republican from Niagara County, said: “I think what happened is that the governor telegraphed to the leadership, ‘Don’t pass any more of these commission bills. We can’t afford it.’ ”

While the state is not officially remembering the Civil War, other groups are. The New-York Historical Society is presenting a five-year program of lectures and walking tours, Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn has been identifying and honoring Civil War veterans buried there, and a number of other organizations are planning sesquicentennial events.

But Sara Ogger, executive director of the New York Council for the Humanities, said, “The state would have put a huge imprimatur on the commemoration.”

I see from this article that the same is true for the state’s history. What a shame that our politicians do not know enogh history, enough of what has gone before to commemorate the sacrifices, the traumas, as well as the heroism and the triumphs.

Newspaper, magazine and book publishers have not been much help either. When I researched the ship found at the World Trade Center this summer (and found her identity only because I’d done so much research in New York to find my own ancestors), one publisher told me that the story is a fantastic mystery, but I should not mention slaves or slavery, because readers will be upset.

I remember the sacrifices New Yorkers made in the Civil War, but I also remember that in response to the Civil War drafts, New Yorkers attacked and burned the homes and businesses of black residents, and burned them in the streets. They burned the black orphanages, and burned men, women and children in the streets. Official commenoration helps us celebrate heroes who fought in the Civil War, but it also helps us to recall and absolve actions that were in no way heroic. Like now, in that era, we had heroes and we had cowards.

Thank you for pointing out that mayor Wood was pro-confederate (NYC was always about cold hard cash). New Yorkers also don’t know that John Brown lived near Lake Placid before his raid on Harper’s Ferry. Harriet Tubman settled in Auburn New York. Frederick Douglas was a resident of Rochester where he published his newspaper, The North Star. Sojourner Truth was enslaved in Rockland County. It is a disgrace that New Yorkers will miss opportunities to know the role that their state and its people played in the civil war.

The assertion that only one “battle” touched a Northern state, while it appropriately recognizes the intensity and savagery of the Draft Riots, fails to note that Gettysburg was fought in Pennsylvania — also that Lincoln’s government’s efforts to suppress Copperhead newspapers and party organizations saw waves of arrests across the Midwest. It might also be mentioned that “Boss” William Tweed (who, if opportunistic, could also be responsible) is credited with a proposal that city government pay the $300 fee or find a substitute for any young man who was drafted. Nor should it be ignored that the speculation touched off by war finances and crises formed the opening chapter of the corruption of the Gilded Ages.

“It produced the most home front patriotic images and the most newsprint. And it had the only ‘battle’ ever to hit a northern state — the one we too often forget — the race riot/pogrom we call in a misnomer the New York Draft Riots.”

Ponder. Since Roberts mentions Gettysburg, he must *intentionally* be excluding Pennsylvania as a “northern” state. Perhaps he implicitly classifies it as “middle Atlantic”.

Nonetheless, he overlooks the St. Albans raid in Vermont. There were gunshots with one killed and one wounded. He must also be excluding Ohio, implicitly classifying it as “mid-western because John Morgan fought a number of skirmishes in the state.

I agree with the historians that there should be a state commemoration especially as there are some southern politicians trying to rewrite history that is was about state’s rights more than slavery. Our citizenry should be educated about what this war was really about.

Our state has failed to participate and make official an important remembrance ceremony acknowledging a most critical event in American history – the Civil War. We have not fully learned the lessons of the Civil War and it is a period we need to reflect upon as a privte citizens, and as public institutions as well.

I don’t know what is more embarassing – the dismal lack of political leadership in this state and the ever increasing corruption coming from Albany or the fact that the state has decided to ignore what is without question one of the most important events in US history. Could this state sink any lower? We have a state museum and a library, colleges and universities, lecture halls, concert halls, parks and so on – all places where events could be held. We are not talking about events that would cost a great deal of money. Even a booklet of some type with information about the relationship of the state and its people to the War would be welcomed. When you consider the number of New Yorkers who fought and died in the War it is a disgrace that no official commemoration will take place. But I guess they are too busy in Albany looking for ways to raise taxes and drive jobs out of New York to waste time on something they couldn’t figure out how to make a buck on for themselves and their cronies.

Funny how the side that won the war is indifferent to it, yet the side that lost still can’t get over it. Care to attend a secession cotillion, anyone? They are holding ’em down South to celebrate the glory days when real men defended slavery. Sick.

To get into more detail, it was NY regiments from upstate that, together with the famous 20th Maine and a Pennsyvania regiment, saved the US position of Little Roundtop on July 2 1863. Had that position fallen, there would have been no disasterous Picket’s Charge. Lee would have won the battle of Gettysburg on Day 2, despite poor generalship on his part. So, let the New-York Historical Society and some other PRIVATE group upstate commemorate our state’s role in the war. These legistlatively authorized commemorative commissions are political boondoggles and rarely do anything except provide sinecures for politicians and their friends. The Brooklyn Historical Society should also get involved, for as the scholar Amy Applegate has documented, Brooklyn was more anti-slavery than Manhattan. Her work on Henry Ward Beecher shows how Brooklyn churches provided support to the Union cause. Many free blacks who were appalled by the chaos of the riots in Manhattan, where members of free black professional class lived, settled in what is now called Bedford Stuyvesant and other brownstone districts of the City of Brooklyn. USS Monitor, the ship that save the Union naval blockade, was built at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. In the City of New York, even politicians once favorably disposed to the southern commercial interests came to support the war and one, the controverisal Dan Sickles, raised so many regimental troops, he became a Corps Commander in the Army of the Potamac (he had much to do w/ authorizing Central Park, too). Organizations such as The Union League Club helped to rally support for Mr. Lincoln among the city’s business and professional establishment.

Another example of New York State ineptitude and short sightedness. My home state is a failure on so many levels. Just tour the battlefields of Antietam and Gettysburg and see the monuments erected by the New York State veterans to their fallen comrades in the decades after the war and now the State does nothing to commemorate their sacrifice for Union and against Slavery. The government of New York is an embarrassment!

The state of New York is not ignoring or forgetting the civil war. The state is encouraging the historians and historical societies to take the lead in remembering the war and not putting the burden of ceremony on the taxpayers.
I can only hope Connecticut will follow suit.

NY is turning it’s back on a critical period in our history, as painful and horrific as it is to reflect on a war that pitted Americans against each other with lines drawn in the sand. Many New Yorkers know very little about this war, nor comprehend the events, causes, effects and conclusions of a war that divided our Nation, resulting in nearly one million casualties, estimated at 620 thousand, give or take a few hundred. Not many Americans are familiar with New York’s history in this regard, and I think NY’s doing a great disservice to the people by not giving an historical accounting.

While reasonable people can debate on both sides on whether NYS is doing enough to remember the Civil War, the really sad issue if the fact that it produced two of our finest leaders Lincoln and Grant and only a very few people have learned from them, especially the teachings of Lincoln, the supreme teacher, that is, don’t go to war unless you are attacked(Bush 2 blunder) and if you must wage a relatively civilized war with no A Bombs(Truman), Vietnam and Iraq torture(LBJ and Bush 2) and other horror stories. Lincoln taught us the art of compromise, that is, sometimes you have to put up with an evil to eventually eliminate it. (slavery).the recent compromises in the Congress on various bills (our leaders finally learned something). In his second inag. speech he warned about the danger of abusing religion. (the South saying God was on their side with slavery). His teaching go on and on but very few people learn from him, including Presidents.

In 1876, Julian W. Merrill, a soldier in the NY 24th Light Artillery wrote a book about his unit to help raise money for a monument in Warsaw, NY. He had seen that the soldiers he served with were being forgotten, particularly the ones who died in the Battle of Plymouth and later at Andersonville Prison, among other prisons.

It grieved him to think that these sacrifices would not be remembered in future generations.

And so it seems, that a soldier’s fears lasts for 150 years.

The monument was erected and still stands. And Merrill’s book, now reprinted and available on Amazon, has the poignant stories of his service, his time in Andersonville, and the fate of many of the soldiers who died there are who suffered, as he did, years after with the mental and physical wounds of war.

How can the state of New York not keep faith with them?
The most poignant part of Merrill’s book is the notation at the end of so many of the biographies of the men: “The number of his grave is…”

The story of how the graves were identified at Andersonville is a fascinating one which includes the efforts of young soldier from Connecticut and Clara Barton, the founder of the American Red Cross.

Julian W. Merrill paid for his service with a life of pain and sorrow–and begging for a pension when life circumstances left him penniless.

Merrill’s college, Yale, paid no tribute to the soldiers, and there were not many, who left college to join the army in their reunions, as indicated in the detailed history of the reunions. One of the members of his class of 1864, John William Sterling, went on to become a very successful corporate lawyer, leaving money to Yale and establishing the law firm Shearman and Sterling, which exists today.
He bore none of the wounds of war.

Among the many unofficial New York sesquicentennial activities planned for 2011 is a series of three public panels at the City University Graduate Center. Supported by a grant from the New York Council for the Humanities, the series, featuring leading Civil War scholars and educators, includes: “Did the Real War Ever Get in the Books? New Scholarship on the Civil War” on February 3rd, “The Great Divide? Civil War Myths and Misinformation” on April 5th, and “Is There Anything More to See? Civil War Photography and History” on November 3rd. For more information about the programs, go to: //ashp.cuny.edu/civil-war-150/

Joshua Brown

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